Thursday, July 25, 2013

First search engines to offer TLS 1.1.and 1.2 as well as "Perfect Forward Secrecy"

NEW YORK & AMSTERDAM
- In the wake of the US PRISM Internet surveillance scandal,
companies are revisiting how they do business online and beefing up
their privacy practices to protect their
users.

Private search
engines StartPage and Ixquick have pioneered a new
advance in encryption security this week, becoming the first search
engines in the world to enable "Perfect Forward Secrecy" or PFS in
combination with a more secure version
of SSL encryption known as TLS 1.1. and 1.2 , which works
by setting up a secure "tunnel" through which users' search traffic
cannot be intercepted.

This is the latest in a series
of security firsts by StartPage and Ixquick, which pioneered the
field of private search in 2006. Combined, StartPage/Ixquick is the
largest private search engine, serving well over 4
million searches daily.

Harvard-trained privacy expert Dr.
Katherine Albrecht, who helped develop StartPage, says, "We take
encryption very seriously, and we've always led the way when it
comes to security. We were first to adopt default SSL
encryption in 2011, and now we're setting the standard
for encryption in the post-PRISM world."

SSL encryption has
been proven to be an effective tool for protecting sensitive online
traffic from eavesdropping and surveillance. However, security
researchers now worry that SSL encryption may not provide adequate
protection if Government agencies are scooping up large amounts of
encrypted traffic and storing it for later decryption.

With
SSL alone, if a target website's "private key" can be obtained
once in the future - perhaps through court order, social
engineering, attack against the website, or cryptanalysis - that
same key can then be used to unlock all other historical
traffic of the affected website. For larger Internet services, that
could expose the private data of millions of
people.

StartPage and Ixquick have now deployed a defense against
this known as "Perfect Forward Secrecy," or PFS.

PFS
uses a different "per-session" key for each data transfer, so
even if a site's private SSL key is compromised, data that was
previously transmitted is still safe. Those who want to decrypt
large quantities of data sent using PFS face the daunting task
of individually decrypting each separate file, as opposed to
obtaining a single key to unlock them all.

This can be
likened to replacing the master "skeleton key" that unlocks every
room in a building with a tight security system that puts a
new lock on each door and then creates a unique key for each
lock.

In addition to its pioneering use of PFS, earlier this
month StartPage and Ixquick deployed Transport Layer Security,
or TLS, encryption versions TLS 1.1 and 1.2 on all of its
servers. TLS is an upgraded form of SSL encryption, which
sets up a secure "tunnel" that protects users' search
information.

CEO Robert Beens urges
other companies to upgrade to these new technologies.
"With Perfect Forward Secrecy and TLS 1.1 and
1.2 combined, we are once again leading the privacy industry
forward. For the sake of their users' privacy, we strongly
recommend other search engines follow our
lead."

Friday, February 22, 2013

Every time you use a regular search engine, your search data is recorded. Major search engines capture your IP address and use tracking cookies to make a record of your search terms, the time of your visit, and the links you choose - then they store that information in a giant database.

Those searches reveal a shocking amount of personal information about you, such as your interests, family circumstances, political leanings, medical conditions, and more.

This information is modern-day gold for marketers, government officials, black-hat hackers and criminals - all of whom would love to get their hands on your private search data.

Major search engines have quietly amassed the largest database of personal information on individuals ever collected. Unfortunately, this data can all too easily fall into the wrong hands.

Problems with theAkamaiDownload Manager? Not able to download the latest Adobe trial? Lost or scratched install discs? Formatted hard drive with your installed and registered Adobe product? Forced to buy costly updates when you still have valid registrations for older products? Don't look any further! Here is your solution.

I try to keep this list updated. Please do get in touch if you can help keep this list updated.

August 2014 Update:

Yes, the links still do work! I had a few issues getting them to work due to the following.

Using Firefox and the add-on HTTPS Everywhere (HIGHLY recommended!!) I had to temporarily change Firefox's settings.

What happens is that Adobe has so called mixed content, so content that is served via http as well as https on the trial download page and Firefox (and I assume other browsers as well) block this sort of stuff.

Once you have ONLY temporarily changed these settings in Firefox (DON'T forget to change them back after the download as finished!!) the trial download on the link given in the Download Instructions below under point 3. will work.

Proceed as normal with the Download Instructions. You will ONLY be allowed to download from the direct download links once you successfully clicked on the yellow "Download now" button AND on the next page that opens you get a windows asking you where to save the download. ONLY then the Adobe session cookie is set in your browser and ONLY then will the direct download links work.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Learn how to download or rip any mix or podcast hosted on Mixloud.com as MP3, M4A or AAC audio file.

This post is updated regularly with the latest information and method on how to download from Mixcloud. Bookmark this post and check back here if you are having trouble downloading from Mixcloud. Thanks to avid participation in the comments section there is always a quick solution if Mixcloud changes its site code or the way mixes are being streamed. Thanks goes out to all commenters below!

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Learn how to make SoundCloud tracks play on any iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch without using the embedded SoundCloud Player for websites or having the iPhone SoundCloud App installed. So far users on an iDevice browsing sites with music hosted on SoundCloud cannot play tracks with the embedded player because Apple does not support Flash. Unfortunately SoundCloud's custom javascript based player that should hold the solution to this also does notalways work. Here is a simple fix that always works.

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

You are browsing the web and suddenly come across a page that displays numbers
instead of letters? You see four numbers inside a little box instead of letters? Well then you might just be missing a Unicode font. Here is a simple fix.